Balanced-budget Plan Losing Key Democrats

February 28, 1995|By New York Times News Service.

WASHINGTON — Prospects that the Senate would adopt a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget seemed to take a turn for the worse on Monday, just hours before a scheduled vote on the proposal on Tuesday.

In rapid succession, three undecided Democrats-Sens. Sam Nunn of Georgia and Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad, both of North Dakota-indicated they would oppose the amendment unless Republicans agreed to major changes that they have so far resisted.

Despite GOP pleas, Nunn expressed "grave doubts" he could support the amendment unless it barred the courts from interpreting its meaning. Nunn argued that without such a prohibition, the federal courts could assume some of Congress' constitutional control of taxes and spending.

Later, after a 90-minute meeting with Republican leaders, Dorgan and Conrad said separately that they not only shared Nunn's concern, but that they believed the amendment also fails to properly protect the Social Security trust fund.

Both men strongly indicated that they would oppose the amendment unless it was changed to ease their concerns.

A fourth Democrat who was in the meeting, Sen. Wendell Ford of Kentucky, also appeared to harbor deep reservations. The fifth undecided Democrat, Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana, was with Nunn in Atlanta on Monday and could not be reached for comment.

Taken together, the day's developments suggested that the 52 Republicans and 12 Democrats who were publicly aligned in support of the amendment would fall well short of the 67 votes needed to push it through the Senate and send it to the states for ratification.

That can change if Republicans who control the amendment debate accede to the Democrats' conditions. But at a rally of amendment supporters Monday, two of the Republicans, Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Larry Craig of Idaho, expressed scant interest in the sort of concessions that the Democrats were asking.

"They can vote the way they want to," Hatch said of Nunn and like-minded Democrats. "But they have to realize this is the most important constitutional vote of this century."

Nunn, Ford, Breaux and Dorgan all supported the last version of the balanced-budget amendment, which narrowly failed in the Senate last spring. And all but Ford were once viewed as likely supporters of this version.

Noting that the amendment lacked a prohibition on judicial rulings that had been part of the 1994 version, Nunn said the current measure could enable appointed federal judges to write, in effect, their own fiscal policy, should Congress ever fail to meet the amendment's demands and be taken to court as a result.